The Shadowfire
by The Fire Magician
Summary: A story that I am writing just for the heck of it: When Aterinus hatched he was immideatly attacked by darkness, but he had a weapon. He was born with a darkness inside of him, and a shadow that was he friend and eternal companion. He was not evil, though. After fighting the darkness a dragoness found him and sent him to the future. His story continues there. First TLOS fanfic
1. Prologue

_**The Shadowfire**_

**Prologue: The Dream**

**Volta (Italian for "Time" according to Google translate)**

I woke up in my room in the temple, but it seemed different. It had a strange blue tint to it. I slowly got up and moved toward the door.

Before I continue I would like to introduce myself. My name is Volta and I am an orphan. I am 10 years old and I have lived at the temple ever since I can remember. The guardians say that they found my egg on their doorstep and they took care of me until I hatched and they raised me. I have started helping out with taking care of the temple and the eggs that are at the temple. I have no element as of yet even though because of the color of my scales the guardians think that I'm an ice dragon, but every time Cyril has tried to teach me how to use ice I am unable to even make a cool breeze come from my mouth. They keep trying to tell me that I'll get it eventually, but I can't help thinking that I don't even have an element.

I opened the door and my eyes expanded twice their normal size. Outside there was nothing but a bunch of floating platforms. Some of them were stationary while others were moving. I stepped out of my room and it de-materialized behind me. I gulped and looked back at the strange floating landscape.

"Welcome, Volta." I heard a voice say, but I can find where it came from.

"Who's there?" I ask with as much confidence as I could muster.

"You may call me the Chronicler. I am here to teach you." It says cryptically.

"Teach me what?" I ask him.

"If I am correct you have not learned your element yet?" He asks, but it seemed more of a statement to me.

"Yeah I can't use ice, but I don't understand why." I say forlornly with my head looking toward the ground.

"It is true that you can't use ice," he says. "But that is not your element."

"What do you mean?" I ask, puzzled.

"Your element is much rarer to come across for a normal dragon. Your element is something that no one has seen in generations. Your element is more different than the rest of the elements than you even know. Your element is Time." He says.

"Time?" I ask with so much confusion in my voice that that you would wonder if he had said something in a completely different language that I didn't understand.

"Yes, Time." He continues. "You are capable of stopping it, slowing it down, reversing it, advancing it, and going forward and backward in time. You have a very unique ability. This year there seems to be a little more energy in the cosmos than usual. I am here to teach you Time because only I am capable of teaching it."

"But why do I have the ability to control Time?" I ask wondering why an orphan like me would have the ability to manipulate, and possibly change time.

"Well most instances of dragons that can control Time are actually future Chroniclers. The only other instances of dragons being able to control Time are purple dragons, so I assume that you are the former. Since that is the case you are now going to be considered my apprentice."

"Hmm." I said considering it. "Sure why not? I need to learn some element in order to help fight Malefor's forces."

"Excellent!" He said. "Let's start now." And so the training commenced.

[Time Skip]

I was standing in my room looking out the window, unable to sleep. I was having a strange feeling that something bad was going to happen. My lessons with the Chronicler had been going on for a week now. I had been learning Time element at a pretty fast rate, and I so far he has told me many things about the world and how it works.

I saw on the horizon a strange dark shape appear and I strained my eyes to see what it was. It suddenly darted down a hill and started heading toward the temple. It went faster and faster, and I wasn't able to keep track of where it was. I caught a glimpse of it go into a window and it took me only a moment to realize that it was the window to the incubation room.

I ran out of my room and I sprinted down the hall to the incubation room and I started figuring out why that shadow was there. The Chronicler told me that Malefor might try corrupting one of the eggs so that he could possibly take down the temple from the inside if any of his other plans failed.

I opened the door and saw that there was a small black and red hatchling with its paw on the purple egg. I gasped in surprise that an egg hatched this early, but then I realized that this little dragon could have possibly been corrupted. I went over to him and picked him up. He gave a surprised squeak when I picked him up, but he soon got settled and curled up in my arms.

I saw out of the corner of my eye some movement and I looked into the corner to see the shadow that I saw sneak into the temple trying to crawl away. The little dragon lifted its head and looked at the shadow and gave a small his at it. He jumped out of my arms and stumbled over to it as he was too young to properly walk.

As he came over to it the shadow flinched away and I saw that the little dragon's shadow moved closer to the shadow after the dragon stopped. His dragon moved forward and I watched as the shadow slashed claws through it over and over again until the shadow was virtually no more, and then his shadow absorbed it. The shadow returned to his body and he walked back over to me.

I realized as I picked him up again that the guardians would never allow a dragon like him to stay here because of how he controlled his shadow even though he destroyed something that was trying to harm him that was sent by Malefor. The guardians would still consider him a threat to the eggs and they would most likely put him to death. Since he was a hatchling he would mostly die rather quickly, but still the seconds before he would pass onto oblivion he would feel terrible pain coursing through his body.

I looked down at him again and realized that I couldn't let that happen to him. He was too cute and I had the feeling that he would turn out to be a good dragon, so I had an idea. The only flaw with it was that he needed a name on order for it to work for him.

"I think that I'll name you Aterinus. Yeah that is a good name, now hold on kid we are going to go for a ride." I said to him before I started the incantation.

During one of my most recent visits to the Chronicler he taught me how to go forward and backward in time and the key to choose which way in time to go is to think of the past or the future, and have a thought tied to it. I started thinking of the past where many of the stories that the guardians told me about had peace, and so I started thinking of it with the hope that there will be someone there to accept him and take care of him, but then I remembered how most of the stories consisted of dragons overcoming darkness and that darkness was considered evil yet the hatchling that I had in my arms wasn't evil yet he had the power of darkness at his claws. I started thinking that it might be possible that dragons in the future accepted dragons that were good and could control darkness, so at the last second before I finished the incantation I thought of a better future for the hatchling and the world as a whole.

The next thing I knew I was in a blue tunnel shooting forward faster than the speed of thought.


	2. The Hatchling

_**The Shadowfire**_

**Chapter 1: The Hatchling**

**Cynder**

Spyro and I were flying through the clouds and doing aerial stunts that brought us dangerously close to the ground. We were having a great time frolicking and being just in each other's presence. It has been 5 years since we have defeated Malefor, and so far there has plenty of peace in the world. After we saved the world we returned Warfang and told the guardians, and Sparx, about our endeavor. When we told them about what happened to Ignitus all of them got teary eyed, and even Terrador had to leave the room before we went on so that he could calm down. Afterward we continued our story with how we defeated Malefor, and when the story was completed we started making plans for the future.

We started planning on rebuilding Warfang with the help of the moles, and also when we were going to start bringing dragons back. We decided that we would start bring the dragons back when Warfang was completed, and where we will find the dragons. We sent a messenger to the dragons telling them that the war was over and Malefor was destroyed. We also told them that we will let them know to return when we have finished the city. The city should be done in about a month now, which I am really excited about. We have helped as much as we can with the repairs, but by as much as we can I mean as much as we are allowed.

The moles don't want us to help them since we saved them from Malefor. They say that they are repaying a debt that cannot be repaid, and by rebuilding Warfang they say that it is a pleasure to help the dragons.

We go out playing every so often so as to get out of the moles' ways, and plus we get rather bored. It is one of those days when we are out playing today.

I flew up as far as I could go, and then I folded my wings and dove downward toward the ground. I felt the air rushing around me as I rapidly grew closer to earth. I felt my heart pumping with adrenaline as I was 20 feet, 15 feet, 10 feet off of the ground, and then I pulled up when I was barely 7 feet off of the ground. As I went flying over the area with the momentum I got from the fall I saw out of the corner of my eye a blue flash, and then it seemed the sky got darker, yet it was still a pleasant blue.

I turned in the direction were I saw the flash and as I was flying I saw another flash of blue, and I homed in on the area and flapped my wings to pick up some more speed. When I got to where I saw the flash I landed and looked around the area, but I saw nothing out of place.

"Hey, Cynder! What are you doing over here?" Spyro says as he lands on the hill behind me. I guess I was too busy with figuring out what the blue flash was that I didn't see him following me.

"It's strange I thought I saw some type of energy around this area." I tell him. I looked again at the area around me, and this time I see on the ground two pairs of footprints. Both of which were smaller than Spyro's and I's tracks, so they must have been younger dragons. One was bigger than the other which were only seen once where it was like the dragon landed from flying, but it didn't take off again or even walk away from the spot.

The other set of prints were smaller than the others and it seemed that it was a hatchling's footprints. They seemed to walk off, but after a little while they disappeared into the grass where the hatchling seemed to be too light for his feet to leave any marks. I followed the prints as far as I could and then tried to find its scent. I failed in finding any scent of any kind, but as I took a step in the direction I thought that it went the world seemed to get slightly dimmer.

I wondered if whatever was causing the darkness was after the hatchling, so I opened my senses to darkness and I slowly followed where the source of the darkness was. I felt some stone on my paws and I looked down to see that there was a series of flat rocks in the prairie with various holes and caves in the ground, and I wondered if something lived there, but my nose reassured me that only Spyro and I were there.

I looked by one of the smaller holes in the ground to see a small black and red hatchling sniffing around the area emitting small squeaks every so often. I looked around the area again before I walked up to the hatchling to see that the darkness wasn't coming from something near the hatchling, but it was actually coming from the hatchling. I was dumbfounded at this as it was not normal to find a hatchling emitting darkness, and I wondered for a brief second if it had belonged to Malefor. I shook my head at how ridiculous of a thought that was since he has been dead and gone for 5 years.

I started walking over to the hatchling with slow and cautious steps so that I wouldn't scare him. He emitted a loud squeak and suddenly looked over in our direction. He backed up toward the edge of the whole and I heard a small growl come from him. I would have laughed at it had I not been trying to get close to the little guy. It suddenly got a whole lot darker and I heard Spyro gasp behind me as I did as well. I couldn't see the hatchling anymore and I was nervous about that.

"Spyro, I need you to breathe a fire ball so that I can see if the hatchling is still there." I told Spyro.

He nodded and blew a fire ball by where he saw the hatchling. It landed right next to it, but the hatchling jumped in surprise and he fell into the hole he was standing in front of.

"Oh, no!" I yelled in surprise as I ran forward with Spyro on my heels.

The darkness dissipated and I saw clearly enough to know where the hole was and I ran to the edge of the hole and looked down at the hatchling. He was on his back and just flipping over on his stomach. I saw him look around in confusion and he emitted a squeak in fear and suddenly the hole went dark. I strained my eyes to see if I could see him, but then I focused on my fear element to figure out where he was and what he was doing.

I sensed that he was afraid of being trapped by two monsters. He looked up and saw them. I sensed that he was afraid of us, but it didn't make sense. He was afraid of something that was both us and not us. He sensed that something within us wanted to harm him, so he emitted the darkness so that what was inside of us would not be able to hurt him. Then with my vision the darkness slowly ebbed away making it easier to see him. He looked exhausted and before my very eyes he fainted from using up so much energy.

"What happened to him?" Spyro asked.

"He was trying to hide from us by using the darkness. He was the one emitting the darkness." I told him.

"Why would he want to hide from us?" He asked.

"It is because it is something within us that wants to hurt him. He fears us..." I drift off thinking about how people still feared me because of my past as Malefor's slave.

"Well, we can deal with that later. Right now we need to get him out of that hole and get him back to Warfang." Spyro says and he used his earth element to widen the hole so he could reach the hatchling.

I put the hatchling on Spyro's back and he started flying for Warfang with me following behind him to make sure that the hatchling didn't fall. I looked at the hatchling as I flew and wondered what happened to the little dragon that made him end up all alone in the prairie.


	3. Descisions

_**The Shadowfire**_

**Chapter 2: Decisions**

**Narrator**

Spyro and Cynder flew back to Warfang as fast as they could. When they made it back to the temple at Warfang they were greeted by the guardians, and then followed by gasps as they saw the hatchling on Spyro's back. They went inside and started discussing about him.

At first the guardians believed that the hatchling was Spyro's and Cynder's son and that they secretly mated without them knowing. However, this thought was dashed when the hatchling woke up and tried to get as far away as possible from Spyro and Cynder, and in fact he tried to even jump out of a window. Cyril was able to get to him fast enough, though, and somehow he was able to calm the hatchling enough that he would at least not try to cause accidental suicide. Cyril held him tight so that he wouldn't try to pull a stunt nonetheless.

They asked them then what his name was, but neither Spyro nor Cynder could answer that question so they decided to come up with a name to call him. They said and rejected names like Balt, Shade, Yin, Volt, Coal, Ven, and various other names. Each one of them tried coming up with a name, but each were rejected because not everyone agreed on them or it just didn't seem to fit with the hatchling. At one point they were stuck with names and they all looked at him. He yawned and he suddenly looked at the side wall and cocked his head to the side. Everyone looked at where he was staring and they saw, written on the wall with some type of dark substance, the name Aterinus. As they watched the name slowly faded from the wall leaving it how it was prior.

After some thought they decided that the word might have had something to do with the hatchling, so they decided to name him just that: Aterinus, the draconic word for Eternity (Don't rage at me about it being draconic. I don't know any draconic, only a little elvish, but not draconic. I just decided to put it in there like that.) After that they moved on to more serious matters.

Volteer brought up the idea that it could be possible that someone might be looking for Aterinus. He believed that someone must have either left him there because of the other set of prints that they found, but what he couldn't figure out is why someone would leave a defenseless hatchling on their own in the wild. Terrador believed that he could have purposely been left there because who ever had him last probably thought that he was evil and that he was going to kill them at any moment. None the less they decided to send out a messenger to see if there were any dragons in the area that had recently lost a hatchling or an egg.

Cynder asked about what they were going to do with him in the mean time because even though Aterinus was still afraid of her she was worried about the little guy. The guardians decided that they were going to have little Aterinus stay with one of them for the time being. Terrador was busy overseeing the rebuilding of Warfang, and Volteer was busy archiving all of the books that were still left in the library so he couldn't look after him. Spyro and Cynder volunteered, but they were quickly shut down by Terrador because he believed that they were still too young to look after a hatchling. The whole time Cyril barely said anything at all, but he just kept looking at the little hatchling that he had on his back. When Volteer asked Cyril if he would keep the hatchling he expected to hear that he wouldn't have the time to look after Aterinus. What he got instead was a smile on Cyril's face and a yes.

Now the rest of the guardians and Spyro and Cynder were confused when they heard this as they were used to Cyril being a self centered and pompous person (Yeah I went Volteer there.). They just couldn't understand why he would do something so unselfish for a small hatchling with a questionable past. Terrador even considered if Cyril was just acting, but the smile that he suddenly had silenced that thought almost instantaneously.

After that little issue was resolved they had to decide what they were going to do with him if no one was found that cared about him. After some consideration they concluded that to not only help Aterinus, but many of the other hatchlings and dragons, was to open up an orphanage. They believed that there might have been dozens of dragons without families because of the war.

After they finished all of that business they agreed that it was getting late and that they should go off to bed.

**Cyril**

I walked to my room in the temple with the little hatchling, Aterinus, lying on the base of my neck. I was surprised like Volteer and Terrador when Spyro and Cynder arrived with him at the door. At first I, like the others, that Spyro and Cynder were the parents of him, but after they explained where they found them I understood.

I glanced back at Aterinus and remember all those years ago about the dragon that lived with us name, Volta. My heart caught when I remembered her and I had a slight tear come to my eye as I remembered how hard she tried to learn ice. Despite how she was sad about how she couldn't use ice she seemed to always have a smile on her face. She seemed to be so happy, but when she disappeared the night before the temple was raided it was so unexpected that we didn't know what to believe. The days before she disappeared she seemed to be even happier, but she also didn't talk about much anymore and even when asked how she slept the night before she hesitated like she was trying to keep something a secret.

'There was a secret that you never told her,' I thought to myself and almost immediately afterwards an image of a red and gold dragoness came to mind. Again I held back tears because of the memories with that dragoness, and thought about the future that we could have had together. I also remembered the egg that she gave me and how I discovered the shattered remains after the raid.

I looked back again at Aterinus as I opened the door to my room and wondered what the future had in store for him. I laid him down beside me as I laid down on the dais with a circular mattress built into it. I curled around him and before we knew it we were both asleep.

**Thanks for reading guys! Please review and comment I feel sad that I don't have many reviews, but I'm use to that by now. Seriously please comment because I could use some criticism. No Cyril was not in love with Volta he just cared about her because she was his student, and because of the secret that he hasn't told her. Also he is not a child molester for those who have pervy minds. I have found that there are not that many stories that consist with the main character bonding with Cyril or even Cyril as the main character, so that is the reason why I went down this road.**


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